


strange & difficult paths

by silver_and_exact



Category: Twin Peaks
Genre: Fluff and Angst, Ghosts, M/M, Post-Canon, Relationship Advice, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-10
Updated: 2014-07-10
Packaged: 2018-02-07 16:28:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,522
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1905864
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/silver_and_exact/pseuds/silver_and_exact
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Albert has an unlikely conversation during an autopsy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	strange & difficult paths

  
  
         Albert Rosenfield privately thought that, in addition to being selectively deaf, Gordon was a bit insane for sending the two of them back here, with all of the personal associations they had with the town.  There had to be a rule against it.  As a matter of fact, Albert was almost certain there  _was_  a rule against it.  It was like sending Cooper off to investigate the murder of one of his dad’s fishing buddies or something.  There was a bias there for sure. 

Besides, it was like sending Albert to hell.  The coffee wasn't half bad (Albert had had better), but Twin Peaks didn't have much else going for it.  It was like the nexus of some crazy alternate universe in which the laws of science had stomped out of existence in an angst-ridden huff.  Now Albert would have to go through the whole Twin Peaks song-and-dance all over again—dodging ghosts, expending far too much energy condescending the incompetent morgue staff, and generally putting up with disappointingly undereducated goons who seemed to practically leap at the chance to contaminate evidence and altogether ruin Albert's day.  All of that plus the near-constant stream of vile romances that seeped through the town like something caustic and vaguely insulting.  He wasn't sure who was more intolerable, the criminals or the law-abiding citizens.  So Albert was coping with it the best way he knew how—by smoking a criminal amount of cigarettes and adding a little extra venom to his insults and complaints.

Albert was particularly worried about this case because he knew next-to-nothing about it.  He and Cooper had been told that a woman had been murdered, and that’s where the debriefing stopped.  All very cryptic.  So now he was in a rental car with Cooper, heading ever-nearer toward that god-awful town.  Cooper was driving because he was considerably less likely to speed and both of his hands could be fully dedicated to the task of driving since, unlike Albert, he wasn't currently smoking like a brushfire and drumming his fingertips frenetically on the armrest.

“You know you should quit,” Cooper said placidly, his eyes never straying from the road.

Albert wasn't sure if Cooper had said “You know you should quit,” or the less patronizing “You know, you should quit,” but either way, it was a bit of advice he wasn't keen on taking to heart.  He also knew that if he was introduced to one more stressor today he’d toss the ash tray and start snuffing the cigarettes out on the dash, repercussions be damned.

“And _you_ know that you shouldn't go back to this town, so let’s just agree that we both have some pretty bad habits,” Albert replied, trying to find the perfect balance of irritability and nonchalance and ending up sounding a bit too defensive for his liking.  He reached into his pocket, emphatically drawing out another cigarette and lighting it.  Never mind that he'd put out the last one while it was only half finished—he was proving a point.

“Albert, there are people there that need our help,” Cooper countered, unruffled by the other agent's prickly attitude.  There was no way for Albert to argue against that without seeming apprehensive about the case, so he muttered something about backwoods troglodytes and stared out the open window.  The smoke pulled from his fresh cigarette and dissipated before it even neared the thick swath of conifers that bound the road, leaving no mark on the wilderness.  Sometimes he daydreamed about burning the whole thing down, ghosts or no ghosts.  
  
Not that Albert believed in ghosts.

 

* * *

 

          When Truman told them what had happened, Albert could have laughed.  It would have been highly inappropriate, but the situation was absurd.  Fucking Annie Blackburn was dead.  That was how Albert always thought of her: Fucking Annie Blackburn.  She was probably more interesting dead than alive, though.  That was something for him to take comfort in.  Annie had been found in a clearing in the middle of Ghostwood Forest.  The old scars across her wrists had been reopened and then some, and Albert would have had no trouble labeling it a garden-variety suicide were it not for the fact that the blood was missing.  It wasn't on her clothes, it wasn't on the ground, and most importantly, it wasn't in her body.

“I believe crucifixes and holy water are standard procedure.  You can take it from here, Truman,” Albert deadpanned, only partially joking.  He wouldn't be surprised if one of the charmingly offbeat residents of Twin Peaks had gotten it into their heads that they were Dracula or something.  Albert was about to go on with an extensive description of how good the aforementioned residents would be at forming an angry mob when he stopped short.  Cooper had paled and was, according to Albert’s expert diagnosis, taking the news rather badly.  Truman in contrast had gone into the preliminary stages of a typical simian rage, his face reddened and his hand instinctively hovering in the vicinity of his sidearm.

Suddenly, the full extent of how uncomfortable this whole thing was hit Albert.  Cooper hadn't exactly broken things off with Annie by choice; her encounter with the Black Lodge had been traumatic, and seeing Cooper was, Albert supposed, a rather unpleasant reminder of everything that had happened.  Cooper therefore did the right thing, as usual: he left town as soon as possible and hadn't been back. 

Albert thought that it was probably for the best, anyways.  Annie’s similarity to Caroline Earl was not lost on him, and the whole thing just seemed unhealthy when you put it in that light.  Cooper would probably follow women like Caroline and Annie around for the rest of his life: pretty, tragic, and guaranteed to be killed within a month or so.  So now Annie was dead, and Cooper—the sap—probably thought it was all his fault.  Still, Albert did feel a bit bad.  She didn't deserve it, really, and he didn't need to stand there making mediocre jokes while one of the only people he genuinely trusted was dealing with a pretty substantial loss.

“Alright... so where’s the body?” he inquired awkwardly, mentally kicking himself because he knew exactly where it was—in that third-rate morgue.  Truman said something to that effect, but minus the “third-rate,” and they headed out.

 

* * *

 

  
         Dead women like Annie Blackburn were what paintings of martyrs and saints were based off of.  The contrast of milk-white and nearly translucent skin against the harsh metallic glare of the table lent her an ethereal effect, even more so than when she had been alive.  Albert didn't really know Annie, but he had met her once or twice and usually that was all he needed to experience of a person before categorizing them as either useful or boring or, in rare cases, likable.  Annie was boring because she was mysterious in uninteresting ways.  Albert figured that she had tried to kill herself over some feeble high school relationship gone sour, and that her halfwit parents had decided that the logical decision was to ship her off to a convent and let religion sort her out.  A pretty lousy thing to do, really.  Albert felt good about his secular worldview; it was a conclusion he had come to voluntarily.

Truman shuffled out of the room awkwardly, muttering that if anyone needed him he’d be back at the station.  Really, Albert didn't give him enough credit—he had a hard job, dealing with all this Twin Peaks nonsense on a regular basis.  All of that supernatural business was probably pretty rough from a legal standpoint.  Cooper, meanwhile,  seemed surprisingly composed.  He looked tired and a bit wistful, but he wasn't sobbing or anything.  Albert was relieved—consolation wasn't one of his strong points.  You didn't exactly need a good bedside manner in his line of work.

“Places like this are just too dangerous for people like her, Albert,” Cooper said distantly, breaking the silence and startling Albert slightly.  Albert didn't trust himself to refrain from saying something incredibly insensitive, so he kept quiet.

“She didn't have a chance," he continued, "I guess Twin Peaks wanted me back, and now here I am.”

“Coop, if you’re saying what I think you’re saying—and I sincerely hope you’re not—then you seriously believe that this girl is dead because the trees around here got lonely or something.  And lonely for you in particular, of all people.  For fuck’s sake, get a grip.”  Albert replied, a bit annoyed to hear Cooper voice such insipid sentiments.  If he didn't know Cooper, he’d think he was being egotistical, blaming himself for something that couldn't possibly involve him.  Since he did know Cooper, however, he knew that it probably _did_ involve him, though Albert would never say so.

Instead of responding, Cooper stared at him for a moment in a hurt, accusatory manner before turning abruptly and leaving the room.  Albert was mystified; this wasn't Cooper’s usual reaction.  He had expected some kind of bizarre elaboration, maybe a full-blown monologue, so unless Cooper had come to grips with Albert’s infallible correctness, (unlikely), he was actually responding like a normal human being.  It was a little disappointing; Albert wasn't sure he liked normal human beings.

 

* * *

 

          “Well, Ms. Blackburn, looks like we’re going to be seeing an awful lot of each other over the next few hours.  I’ll be seeing more of you, of course, but I'm sure you understand that it’s not an experience I particularly look forward to.”

Albert almost always talked when he was performing an autopsy.  It was really a lot like Cooper and that damned dictaphone, but more on the macabre side.  Thankfully, Albert tended to either actively or passively repel morgue employees—if they heard half of the things he said, they might be less afraid of him.  Or they might think he was insane, which could certainly inspire fear, but not the type of fear he could feel smug about.

“So, Annie—may I call you Annie?  Splendid.  I don’t think we've ever really sat down and talked, though something tells me we wouldn't share many common interests.  I’m not sure what people do in convents, exactly, but it’s probably not anything I tend to get up to in my spare time.”

The body on the table predictably remained pale and unresponsive.  Albert wondered sometimes if maybe he really was a little off.

“I guess we can talk about Cooper.  Did you even bother to find out how he got rid of that thing that was in him?  BOB?  He shut himself up in his room at the Great Northern for a week.  Told Truman to watch the door, and when the week was up the door burned down.  The whole room looked like it was made of charcoal, and there was Cooper, just sitting in the middle of the floor in the fucking lotus position.  Want to know what I think?  I'm pretty sure he set himself on fire.  Probably didn't think he was going to make it.  He’s the only person I know who would improvise an exorcism with a jar of motor oil.”

Albert paused.  He wouldn't have believed any of it if he hadn't seen the room himself and the little circle of unburned floorboards at its center.  It was sort of impressive, albeit in a totally incomprehensible way.

“He just hasn't been right lately.  I don’t think he sleeps much.  And now you have to go and die on him, and he thinks it’s his fault because he’s ‘highly attuned to the supernatural world’ or something.  Cooper’s not really good with loss.  When Caroline—”

“Why do you always call him Cooper?”

Albert took an involuntary step backwards, upsetting a tray of surgical instruments.  This was not the route his life was headed down.  No.  Not a chance.  This kind of madness was for more creative people, not astonishingly capable, reality-grounded forensic pathologists.  He scrutinized the body, feeling a bit silly when he waved his hand in front of Annie’s face and saw no reaction.  Besides, her entire chest cavity was split open and held in place with a set of rib spreaders.  She was dead.  He composed himself by methodically re-sterilizing his instruments, and resolved to get more sleep; since he’d been informed he was coming back to Twin Peaks he’d been too tense to get much rest.

“As I was saying,” he continued loudly, “Cooper—”

“Why do you call him Cooper? He has a perfectly suitable first name.”

The voice seemed to be coming from somewhere slightly above the table.  Albert checked the room, feeling nauseous.  Someone was playing a terrible prank on him, and it wouldn't be the first time.  There had to be a hidden microphone somewhere; Albert even went so far as to climb up on a chair and push up a few of the ceiling tiles—nothing. This was of course no great cause for concern—electronics were getting smaller and smaller these days.  Still, it was hard to believe someone even marginally intelligent was trying to make fun of him, especially in Twin Peaks.  The locals usually resorted to fisticuffs. 

“You’re wasting your time.  Besides, I thought you were the one who wanted to talk,” the voice said, petulant and again seeming to come from everywhere and nowhere.  Albert was no stranger to the unexplainable, but that didn't mean he had to like it.  He’d suspended his disbelief more times than he was comfortable with—working with Cooper made it a common practice.

“I guess I call him Cooper because... oh for fuck’s sake, are we really going to play twenty questions while I weigh and catalog your organs?”

“Yes, I suppose we are,” said Annie Blackburn’s disembodied voice, sounding amused.

“Okay then.  Well, what do you call him? _Dale_?  That’s completely ridiculous.  And what else could I use?  Special Agent?”

“I fail to see what is ridiculous about addressing a friend by their first name," the voice said imperiously, "and yes, I call him _Dale_.”

“He’s not my friend,” Albert insisted.  Albert didn't have friends.  It sounded so hokey.  He had _colleagues_.  
  
“That’s not what he says,” Annie replied dreamily.  Slightly sing-song, even.

Albert now wiped from his mind any notion that someone was putting him on.  No one could sound that spaced-out but the real Fucking Annie Blackburn.  He decided to reclaim some control of the situation and resumed the autopsy.  It would be quite novel, being able to talk to the patient for once.  
  
"So, why do you think I tried to kill myself?" Annie asked.  Her tone was strangely conversational, like they were chatting about books they'd recently read, or which local restaurant had the best lunch menu.  
  
Albert was slightly uncomfortable, but not too uncomfortable to rattle off a few of his pet theories.  "Breakup. Bout of severe depression. Disagreement with parents went a bit overboard.  I don't know.  Why does anyone try to kill themselves?"  
  
"They put me in a _convent_.  Come on, figure it out," she wheedled.  Albert didn't like her tone.  
  
"...unexpected pregnancy followed by a very un-Christian abortion?" he proposed tentatively.  
  
"I'm interested in women," Annie replied, her voice carefully neutral as if she were trying to sound blasé.  She just ended up sounding slightly embarrassed.  
  
"Oh," said Albert lamely.  He was an idiot.  Brilliant, but still.  Right now he was an idiot.

And since he was already being an idiot, he decided to just go for it.  
  
"Well, I'm _not_ interested in women.  Never been to a convent, though."  
  
"I knew it!  Now we're getting somewhere," Annie with delight, and perhaps a hint of smugness.  
  
"Okay, okay.  Don't broadcast it," Albert hissed, before realizing that the likelihood of others hearing Annie was slim, and she hadn't even actually said anything incriminating.  He vindictively removed her liver and was irritated by its pristine exterior.  As a doctor, he had a pretty good idea of what his liver looked like, and it wasn't even close to pristine. Neither were his lungs, for that matter.  
  
"So wait," Albert said uncharacteristically slowly, "all of that with Cooper was... what?"  
  
Albert despised the Cooper/Annie relationship.  It was so typical.  The damsel in distress and the protector.  It was unseemly, watching two adults carry on like that.  No one over the age of seventeen should be that clichéd.  They were practically paddling swan boats across Black Lake at sunset.  Somnabulating around chatting up trees like morons.  It kind of all made sense now, though.

"It was what I was supposed to do," Annie replied, sounding miserable and guilty, "and even when I did what I was supposed to do, everything was still terrible."  
  
Albert began to understand what was going on here.  He wished he didn't.  From the moment he'd started hearing Annie's voice he had been looking forward to flying into a rage, not empathizing.

"So what was your plan?  Run off to the middle of nowhere and find yourself a cozy little hetero-normative relationship?"

"Pretty much.  I mean, it's not exactly the middle of nowhere—my sister's here, but she doesn't care one way or another. I guess I thought that if I had to figure this out, it'd be with the one family member who wouldn't make a big deal about either outcome."

"Well that's... that makes sense," Albert acceded begrudgingly.  Fucking Annie Blackburn, robbing him of his right to feel righteously indignant.  "So what was the outcome, if you don't mind my asking?"  
  
"Gay."  
  
Albert smiled grimly. "Yeah, join the club."  
  
"So..." Annie said slyly, "about Dale..."  
  
Albert very nearly dropped a scalpel into Annie's chest cavity, but managed to compose himself.   
  
"I can't help but sense an implied connection between these conversations," he said tersely.  
  
"You like Dale," she cackled.  "You _love_ him."  
  
This was horrific.  This was unreal.  Well, an additional level of unreal.  This was the subcutaneous layer of unreality.  
  
"Okay.  Back to the matter at hand," Albert said mock-casually, wincing at the pun inherent in his phrasing.  He was conducting a goddamned autopsy.  He was talking to someone who was, at the moment, all over his fucking hands.  "How did you die?"  
  
"I'll take that as a 'yes', and I killed myself, obviously.  Take a look at my wrists."  
  
"Oh really?  I don't suppose you siphoned off all of your blood while you were at it?"  
  
"...what?"

"Your body.  It doesn't have any blood in it."  
  
"Well, I don't know anything about that," Annie said with mild interest.  
  
"Nothing?"  
  
She paused, deep in thought.  "The forest probably took it."  
  
"I... you know what? I believe that," said Albert, resigned.  
  
"It was a silly thing to do, really.  I feel a lot better now that I've had some time to think about it.  I was distraught," Annie explained, matter-of-fact.  
  
"I see," replied Albert sardonically.  
  
"But this isn't what I wanted to talk about at all," Annie said petulantly.

Albert sighed.  "I wasn't under the impression that you wanted to talk about anything in particular.  From what I've gathered so far, your intent is to relentlessly badger me for your own amusement."  
  
"Now why would I want to do that?"  
  
Albert shrugged.  "You're bored and dead."  
  
"A fairly good reason," Annie admitted, "but I'm here to talk about Dale.  You have to be nice to him, okay?"  Her tone was light, almost affectedly so, but Albert caught an undertone of slightly jittery earnestness that was _so_ Annie Blackburn  
  
"Why?" Albert said flatly.  He didn't appreciate being told that he had to be nice to anyone.  
  
Annie took a deep breath.  "Because he likes you."  
  
Albert rolled his eyes.  How trite.  "So I've gathered.  We've worked together for years with minimal cause for complaint."

Annie paused before repeating tentatively, with a new inflection, "He _likes_ you."

 

* * *

  
  
Albert gaped at the body, probably looking like an idiot or some kind of pervert. "You're joking."  
  
"I would never," Annie replied quickly, scandalized.  
  
"And just what exactly am I supposed to do with this information?" Albert eventually said, his voice tinged with bitterness.  He wasn't going to let himself get hopeful about this.  It just wasn't feasible. 

"What do you mean?" Annie asked, puzzled.

"I mean what did you do when a woman you liked was also interested in you?  I'm sure it never worked out well, judging from the ultimate direction your life ended in.  The general public isn't exactly cavalier about that sort of thing."

"Never happened."

Albert felt like an asshole.  

"Okay," he sighed, "what do you think I should do?"

"Are you asking me... for advice?" Annie said, again cruelly gleeful.  

"Listen, I'm already having a conversation that's not only uncomfortable, but also should be, for all intents and purposes, impossible.  I've accepted that.  It wasn't easy.  Now  _what do you think I should do?"_

 

 

* * *

 

"Uh... listen, do you want to go get coffee or something?" Albert said determinedly, staring down at his feet and cringing internally at the whole scenario.  

Cooper stared at the pathologist, plainly surprised.  Then he smiled, and Albert allowed himself to exhale.  "You know what, Albert?  I think I'd like that."

 

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> i'll confess that i'm a bit of an annie blackburn hater, but i think i solved the problem that i had with her fairly neatly. i like the annie i made up.  
> incidentally, i also don't much like john justice wheeler. both of these characters were really obviously shoehorned in as plot devices. they're more like macguffins than people. ...i daresay that maybe the two of them should've just gotten together.  
> as a disclaimer, i'm not totally averse to cooper/audrey. audrey's super cool. the concept just bores me a little. as a young woman, i guess i ought to relate more to audrey, but irritable/secretly nice (tsundere if we want to be anime/manga geeks) characters have always been my favorite. besides, there's more angst this way. 
> 
> so anyways, how's my story? read & review?


End file.
